Artist Joa Korhonen

The Elite | 100x100cm acrylic on canvas

Joa Korhonen is known for a long and respected career as a musician. Altogether eight albums by his main band SARA, as well as an album by Meadow Island, and a trilogy of EP's as part of Pedestrian's Motor have largely been written by Korhonen. Over the past 15 years Korhonen used songwriting as his main vessel to transfer and transmit emotions and emotional landscapes.

Still everything could not be said. A need for an alternative vessel reinforced.

Alongside his music Korhonen has constantly worked on visual arts not only for his own amusement, but also for the cover art of his album releases as well as other visual components of his bands and musical projects. Becoming active as a painting artist was a natural channel for artistic expression while SARA decided to take a break from touring and recording.

Finesse | 100x100cm acrylic on canvas

Paintings of faces started to surface. Intuitively at first, even randomly or by accident. The paintings started out from rough and partial sketches which Korhonen calls suggestions:

"A suggestion of an eye, for example, might suddenly surface. The strokes often were almost random. Vision started to focus and depth appeared to quickly build into the work, a layer by layer. In my own opinion, my best works are in a way composed of layers and layers of mistakes."

The meanings behind the faces begun to clarify in time. "A human being can express an almost unlimited amount of emotions by facial expressions. In my works the actual facial expressions are fairly stagnant and similar to each other, yet the emotional landscapes communicated by the paintings are vastly different from each other. The meaning and theme of an individual painting usually opens itself to me at the finishing stages. The process feels authentic and pure."